


I've been waiting up all night

by rustykitchenscissors



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Aliens, Apocalypse, F/M, Harm to Animals, M/M, Masks, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Multi, Roleplay, Voyeurism, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 18:02:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustykitchenscissors/pseuds/rustykitchenscissors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aliens may or may not be invading Pawnee and April and Andy have taken to sleeping in Ben's bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've been waiting up all night

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in a mild AU of season four called, "I didn't double check any timelines before writing and it shows."

“Babe.” Andy’s breath just misses her ear. “Wake up.” His hand rests on her bent knee.

“I can’t.” April looks for a pillow to shove her head under, but they threw them all on the floor last night, turning the mattress into a raft lost at sea. 

“April, this is _really_ important.”

“No.”

“I think there’s a UFO outside our window.”

“Andy. It’s probably just the neighbors’ stupid light-up reindeer again. Come on. Calm down. I’ll give you a handjob or something.”

“Thanks, but that’s not—I’m not even really hard right now, and I’m kind of scared, and do you think you could come to the window instead, please?” When April’s eyes adjust to the light, his lower lip is trapped under his teeth. They dig in so hard, his skin turns bright white. She moves his hand off her knee and slips her own inside of it. 

“Ugh. Fine.”

He tugs her out of bed. Ben’s been turning the heat down after they go to sleep and her Mouserat shirt ends at the tops of her bare thighs. Andy wraps himself around her shoulders like a cape and they walk like that, her hands on his forearms, to the window.

“I heard this sound like—BUJIHHHH—and I woke up! Because I thought maybe you were choking, or there was something wrong with Champion, but no, he was fine, I gave him a treat, but then I checked outside, and look!” 

Andy points. Something hangs in the sky. Without her glasses, April isn’t sure what, but it’s a mess of dim lights, rocking and swaying. Her hands tighten and Andy makes a small, pained noise before asking her, “See?”

“No way.” She turns to face him. “Andy, that’s—”

“That’s totally a UFO!” 

His chest expands with breath. Her eyes scan back and forth like she’s reading his face. Neither of them moves. Then a stray light throws itself across Andy’s cheek, and April says, “Shit, _Andy_!” 

 

Ben wakes up to the full weight of April’s body on top of him. She’s saying, “When, When, When,” or probably she’s saying, “Ben,” which would make more sense. Then Andy’s face is in his, and he is definitely screaming Ben’s name, like Ben is underwater. All Ben can think to do is reach out and cover Andy’s face with his hand. 

“What.” April stops talking, but doesn’t move off of him. He can hear the dog panting near his head now. He uncovers Andy’s mouth.

“There are aliens outside of our bedroom _right now_ and we need you to tell us what to do or at least let us hide in here with you until they take someone else and leave.”  
.  
“Seriously? You’re waking me up at—3:49 because one of you had a nightmare?”

April rolls to lie next to him. “Sorry for thinking you might want some advance warning before they impregnate you with their demon spawn.” 

“Dude,” Andy says, stroking the dog’s head. “This is serious. Do you have a lightsaber we can borrow?” 

“No, I don’t have a lightsaber. Why do people ask me that? And even if I did, you wouldn’t take out an entire ship of aliens with it on your first try.” 

April sits up. “Oh, so you do believe in aliens.” 

“No, I don’t—Look, I believe that you think you saw a UFO. It’s late, and you’re tired, and I’m tired, and I suppose it is possible that the federal government has the technology to create military aircrafts like you’d see on _The X-Files_ , and is testing them in Pawnee for…some reason, but no one is going to be impregnated.” April and Andy both stare at him. The dog lies down to go to sleep.

“I’ll be impregnated if I wanna be impregnated.”

“And then she’ll get an abortion if she wants to get an abortion. Because that’s her right.” 

“Fine. I get it. It’s a joke. Very funny. Now could you both please go back to your own room and let me sleep?”

“No!” April crumples his sleeve in her fist. “Please.”

The bed creaks as Andy crawls on top of it, his face appearing over April’s shoulder. “They can’t hurt all of us. Plus, it can see us in there. It’s not safe.”

“Yeah, you like live in the Batcave.”

When Leslie slept over, she liked to be woken by the first sign of dawn, but lately he’s been keeping the blinds down and the curtains drawn. They’re nice curtains. They’re blue plaid. They really brighten up the room. 

“Fine. But the dog stays on the floor.”

Andy laughs too loudly. “Of course. Ben. Who would let. A dog. In a bed? Haha. Ha. I mean, come on.” He looks at April, squinting in a way that probably means they’ll let the dog up after Ben falls back asleep. 

“And you two stay over there. On that side.” 

Andy nods earnestly and Ben lies down, turning so that he faces the wall and not them. April whispers something to Andy and it’s hard to tell if the breath he huffs out is laughter or relief. 

To their credit, they lie very still. Like little kids afraid of monsters under the bed. Though if he turns around, they’ll probably disrupt that image by staring unblinkingly at him or having their hands down each other’s pants, or. Maybe he should stop this line of thinking. 

April and Andy are going to sleep and so is he. 

 

Ben talks in his sleep. Just a little. Andy does too, sometimes. Maybe everyone does sometimes, but she hopes not. “Intel,” Ben murmurs. “Int.” 

There are aliens outside, probably, but it doesn’t feel like it. Andy’s heart beats beneath her head, and these flannel pajama pants gape too much around her legs. Why’d she stop to put them on before running in here? Like the first thing aliens do isn’t steal your clothes. 

Ben makes a disconcerted noise. 

April remembers sleeping with Derek’s arm flung across her chest, his hand curled loosely around Ben’s calf—Not this Ben’s calf; that would have been weird. Gay Ben’s calf. Incoherent infomercial images of women in ugly bikinis playing mutely on the TV. The three of them on the musty futon in Derek’s basement. Stale popcorn on the floor. All that body heat and Derek’s whistling snore. 

She didn’t love either of them the way she loves Andy, but maybe that level of complication wasn’t all bad. 

 

In the night, Ben’s body becomes a heat-seeking missile. He wakes to find himself curled at Andy’s back, a string of drool connecting his mouth to Andy’s t-shirt. His tongue twirls the drool back into his mouth like spaghetti around a fork, but he stays where he is, morning breath against Andy’s curved spine. He considers moving. If Andy wakes up—

Then nothing. He’ll say, “Morning, man. That was so weird last night, right?” He’ll act like he and Ben spoon all the time. 

One of April’s hands hangs near Ben’s head, her arm and half her torso draped over Andy’s bulk. Like a drowning victim, she’s face-down, hair spread carefully out. But she breathes. She and Andy breathe together. There’s a lot of breathing happening in this bed. 

The room’s almost as dark as it was when they came bounding in, the shadows bluer but still too heavy to look like morning. If he stays very still, he can pretend he never woke up. Body clocks, Leslie taught him repeatedly, are only for ignoring. He waits for April or Andy or a car alarm to force him into the world. 

 

 _UFOs_ returns 23,500,000 Google results. _Fucking UFOs_ returns 6,820,000. _Why won’t UFOs leave me alone_ returns 301,000 results, but April is pretty sure that none of those actually answer her question. She reads a lot about alien abductions, and how there’s a part of the brain that makes people believe they’ve been abducted, which, bodies are weird, but she and Andy (and Ben and Champion) weren’t abducted, so there goes that for relevancy. 

Leslie appears behind her as she’s watching Bill Nye slam down some UFO conspiracy theorists on _Larry King_. “Mmm,” Leslie says. “Bill Nye.” All April can see are the gauzy polka dots of Leslie’s shirt as she leans in to get a closer look at the screen. The hand she braces herself against the desk with shakes. 

There are papers in Leslie’s other hand, and April almost wants them to be an assignment for her, so she can stop picturing aliens and stop listing in her head what else colored lights in the sky could mean. __

_1) A club for people who like to play with flashlights  
2) Floating neon signs  
3) She and Andy accidentally took LSD  
_  
But Leslie just says, “Mmm,” again, straightens up, and walks away to give the papers to Jerry. 

 

Some afternoons, Ben sits on the front steps and reads. It makes him feel like he’s participating in the community—in his own way—and usually lasts until a cop car turns down the street. Then he stands up quietly, goes inside, and locks the door. Heats up some leftovers. Watches The History Channel. 

_Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff_ is propped open against his knees, but he’s only read two pages in the last half hour. His eyes bounced off the word “dot-matrix” and never came back down. Instead, he’s been watching a guy he recognizes from a house two blocks away inch closer, stapling papers to every telephone pole between him and Ben. 

There’s a telephone pole directly in front of Ben. He considers saving himself by going inside now, but it’s actually kind of warm today, and the sunlight feels good wrapped around the legs of his jeans, and standing up is something he isn’t quite ready for.

The guy’s wearing a suit like he has somewhere better to be; Ben’s seen him grocery shopping in that suit on Saturday mornings. But the grey coils of his hair are out of place, and at every pole, he pushes the stapler in with more force than necessary. 

Ben’s still staring when the guy shows up in front of him. The guy’s jaw flexes as he peels a paper from the top of the stack.

“Hey…neighbor,” Ben says to his back. The guy grunts. “You know, that’s—that’s a really nice stapler. It looks sturdy. I don’t even think they make staplers like that anymore. Unless they’re keeping them a secret, which, uh.” The guy twists his neck to look at Ben. “That would be ridiculous. Obviously.” The guy puts a staple in the fourth corner and moves on. 

The sign reads:

ATTENTION!!!!!

[Out-of-focus photo of a cat washing itself on a sofa.]

MISSING CAT.  
SHORT HAIR TABBY.  
ANSWERS TO CARL SCARPOLINI JR.  
NO REWARD.  
CONTACT CARL SCARPOLINI SR. W/ INFO.

(No phone number is provided.)

Down the block, Carl Scarpolini Sr. has run out of staples. He pulls a wad of gum out of his mouth and hangs the flyer up with that. Ben tries to read about Bernie Madoff, but the specter of Carl Scarpolini Jr. washing hangs over him, and he finds himself conscious of the fact that he hasn’t showered in three days. He pulls a strand of hair out to the side and it stays where he leaves it.

He marks his page and closes the book. A siren sounds nearby. 

 

April’s half playing minesweeper, half falling asleep when Andy walks into the office. He has his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes on Ron’s door.

“I really need to talk to Ron like right now.” 

“Ron Swanson is currently indisposed. If you’d like to make an appointment—” 

“Please, April? I can tell him I held a knife to your throat. Or you were drugged! No, the knife was better. Please? Just for a minute. I promise you won’t lose your job.” 

Through the glass, April can see Ron watching them. His face tells her nothing. 

She closes minesweeper and stretches across her desk, hands reaching for Andy. “Hey. Come here?”

He exhales loudly and walks to her, kneeling down and taking her hands. He leans his forehead against hers and whispers, “I think we should tell Ron about the UFO.” He pulls back. 

She brushes a lock of hair from his forehead. It’s damp like he’s been running around in the parking lot, trying to work things out. “What would Ron know about UFOs?” 

“I don’t know yet. But he knows a lot. About a lot of things.” Ron has stopped watching them. A sandwich wrapped in butcher paper monopolizes his desk. “And he spends a lot of time alone in the woods. People are always showing up there naked, saying they were abducted, right? Oh my god. Maybe Ron showed up in the woods naked.” Andy glances toward Ron’s office.

April squeezes his hand. “Fine. But can you at least start out talking about football or slaughtering game hens? Don’t freak him out.”

Grinning, Andy stands. He salutes her. “Check and mate.” 

“Andrew!” Ron booms when Andy opens the door. Then it swings shut and the rest of the conversation is lost to her. At least Ron sounded cheerful. Or as cheerful as he ever does at work.

Andy talks with his hands. He always does, but these are careful hand motions. Like shadow puppets, like he knows April’s still watching. He’s throwing a football, then running, then pointing to the giant sandwich and nodding approvingly. He sits on the edge of the desk, but jumps back up at Ron’s look. 

Then he gets to the good part.

He rests his head on his hands like he’s asleep, then shocks himself awake. Outside the window of one hand, his other hand spins around, claw-like. Andy cowers beneath his own hands. Ron’s moustache moves. A little bit. Maybe. 

Andy doesn’t come out for at least half an hour. A cardboard box of books rests in his arms, and he’s somewhere between smiling and gaping. April raises her chin and gives him a thumbs up. He tries to return the gesture, but remembers at the last second that his hands are full.

When they leave to get lunch, they walk past Ron in the hallway. “Yes, I am an amateur UFO enthusiast,” he tells a cameraman. “Who wants to know?” 

They eat on the curb outside City Hall. Shreds of buffalo wing caught in his teeth, Andy says earnestly, “It’s a good thing I’ve been to college now, or you’d have to read all those books yourself.”

April swirls her finger around in her single-serving cup of ranch dressing. “Hey, maybe Ben can read them for us.” 

Andy’s fingers stick to the skin of her shoulder. “Babe,” he says. “You’re brilliant.” 

She shrugs and licks the dressing off. “You’re the one who knew to ask Ron.”

“You’re right. We’re both geniuses.”

They interlock their fingers and raise their arms above their heads. It’s harder to eat while holding hands, but neither of them lets go. 

 

Ben spends the evening with _Star Trek: The Original Series_ on Netflix and without April and Andy breaking anything. Without April and Andy at all. They slink away to sleep while he’s just starting his third episode, sprawled on the couch with his laptop warming his chest. He’s used to silence during the day, but tonight, it feels wrong. Like everyone has left him and no one’s coming back. 

So while he wants to fall asleep there, his head burrowing into the space between the couch arm and back, one earbud half-fallen out, he can’t. His shoulders and chest are calling him up into the world, his fingers tapping, knees bending, asking him not to give up on finding a solution to. To whatever’s wrong right now. The silence flooding the house. 

He brushes his teeth and prods at the purple skin under his eyes in the bathroom mirror. He lets the Scope sit in his mouth for ten, twenty, thirty seconds instead of swishing it around. He slumps into his bedroom and he doesn’t find a solution there, but he does find an explanation. 

They lie perpendicular to one another, April not fitting all the way on the bed, Andy sandwiched between her legs, his face in an open book. They’re managing to sleep with all the lights on and with the blankets crumpled on the floor. Ben’s shadow falls over them. 

“Oh my god. Really? You’re still afraid to sleep in your own bed?” No answer. “You understand that I’m your roommate, right? Not a court-appointed guardian?” April’s head nudges catlike at his thigh. “What does that mean? Are you awake? Could either of you please form a sentence? I’ll settle for some fragments.” 

All he gets is a groan. April sits up, tosses the book Andy’s using as a pillow into a corner. “Man,” she says, curling her bare legs in front of her, “you talk too much.” 

“So that’s a—” But her fingers are switching off the bedside lamp and she’s pressing herself against Andy’s side and pretending to snore and his question is left hanging. Didn’t know what he was going to ask anyway. 

The book landed open, half its pages to the wall, half to the floor. Killer on the spine. Ben picks it up and strokes the cover comfortingly. Black cover, too much text, a sun rising—setting?—at the end of a road. _Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact_. 

Right. Of course they’re still scared.

“Loser,” April says between fake snores. 

The couch is still an option. So’s their room, if you ignore the stained sheets and unidentified sharp objects on the floor. So’s kicking them out, because if he insists loudly and often enough, they might actually give in. 

Slotting himself in next to them is still an option too. Ceiling fixture off and blankets pulled up, it’s not even a bad option. April mutters, “Such a loser,” one more time before her snores soften and shallow. His shoulder touches her shoulder. Their body heat gets all mixed up with his. 

 

Lower lip caught between April’s teeth, Andy says, “Oh ing oh weh ooing oh ren arate.” April’s eyes open as he pulls his mouth free and bangs his head against a filing cabinet in the process. Directly to his right, a rusty screw thrusts into the air. There are worse places to make out than the fourth floor, but April isn’t sure what they are. 

“What?”

He shakes his head like a cartoon. “I think what we’re doing for Ben is great. I think it’s really helping him.”

Dust has settled into the grooves of April’s fingers, so she wipes it off on her skirt. Someone screams in the hallway. An attack scream, not a wounded one this time.

“What? Pissing him off so he’ll help us?”

“No! Well, yeah, but. He’s really lonely, right? And he won’t love Champion for whatever reason, like maybe he has a really sad childhood dog story. But he probably just needs like a teddy bear or a Hobbes. He could totally be that kid.”

“His hair’s stupid enough.” 

Andy’s hand settles absentmindedly on her neck. Warm fingers fumble with her collar. 

“We. Are. Doing good. We have a mission. A purpose.”

“I thought our purpose was fighting aliens.” In her lap: a file on Carson, Crater and Jillian, Divorce Proceedings, Bizarre, recounting how Carson, Crater accused Carson, Jillian of selling him to alien invaders, creepy. 

“Well, yeah. That too. But we can help Ben and fight aliens. Every cool movie has a b-plot, right?” 

“Not a b-plot about sleeping.” 

Andy looks into the distance, one eyelid at half-mast. “ _Inception._ ”

“Just sleeping.”

“ _Sleepless…in Seattle_.” 

“That’s boring. And I’ve never seen it.” 

He ducks his head, starts playing with the hem of her skirt. The taut feeling of his knuckles brushing her legs through microfiber. His fingers slip under her skirt and he looks up, eyes scanning her face, asking. 

“Yeah,” she says, nodding, so his hand goes further up her thigh, nails digging, and there’ll be runs in her tights later, but they’re old, whatever; the crotch is already torn open. 

“It’s not just about sleeping.” His mouth is barely moving, his eyes narrowed. April pushes back against the wall, stretching her legs to rest on either side of him. Her spine is bent all wrong and the file folder digs into her stomach. 

“ _Sleepless in Seattle_? Wouldn’t it be about not sleeping? And Seattle?” 

“Yeah, but no, it’s about this really sad guy whose wife is dead and he needs to find someone new to love, and his son’s all like, ‘You should love Meg Ryan, dad. Trust me.’ But he doesn’t trust him. But then he does.” His whole hand enters the hole in her tights, widening it.

“When did you watch this?” 

“I did have two broken legs for, like, ever.” 

April mmms. Tucks her lips inside her mouth. Rests one ankle on Andy’s shoulder as he presses at her through her underwear. Almost knees herself in the eye. “So what, you’re like, Ben’s son here?”

He frowns. “No. Or. I don’t know. He’s kind of young.” 

He pulls her underwear aside and she leans forward, trying to make her lips meet his ear and god, it hurts. Maybe she should take her mom up on accompanying her to yoga class sometime. 

Right. 

With his fingers buried inside her, she asks, “So you’re Meg Ryan?”

He stops moving. “Woah, dude, no. Meg Ryan isn’t married, and I love you.” 

She tries to lean forward more and gives up, wrapping one hand around his neck and pulling until he gets the hint and leans down, looming, one hand on the floor and one hand still inside of her. Now her lips meet his ear. 

She whispers, “So we’ll both be Meg Ryan. That could be fun.” 

Silence. Then Andy giggles. “Oh my god,” he says, and laughs harder. He turns his head so their eyes are almost touching, which makes April blink furiously. “Oh my god.” He cranes his neck to stare at the ceiling. “You are so weird. I love it.” 

She kisses his stupid face and grabs his wrist to get him moving again.

 

April and Andy fall asleep in Ben’s bed. That night and the next night and the next and the next. Indentations would be forming in the mattress if they ever slept in the same positions twice. They fall asleep surrounded by books with long names and photos of wild-eyed authors on their back covers. Books with dozens of dog-eared pages and tear-out newsletter subscription cards and terrible copyediting. 

“‘When the aliens placed me on the examination torble’? Really? How do you make that mistake?” Ben’s back rests against the headboard, his knees pulled up to his chest and splayed. On either side of him, April and Andy are deep in sleep. “Am I missing something? Is he borrowing words from the aliens’ language?” 

The only response he gets is Andy’s leg jerking into the air before his muscles untense and his whole body appears smoother somehow. Another page to mark with an orange Post-It, in case Ben ever gets around to calling the publisher. 

It’s the third book about aliens he’s read this week. The first one, he left pencil marks in, mostly question marks and ellipses with the occasional underline for facts he wanted to double check later. Then Andy told him the books were Ron’s and he bought a kneadable eraser just to make sure the pages wouldn’t get destroyed in his rush to hide his crime. 

He still worries that he left a stray, “What,” somewhere in there. 

It’s been a week since that UFO—for lack of a more accurate term—drove April and Andy out of their room and into his. 

Despite what the rest of the house might indicate, Andy can make a bed with military precision. (“Yeah, dude, my dad was in the Navy. Marines? Totally something water-related. We should get a water bed.”) He smoothes and pulls and hospital corners every morning before leaving for work, while April kicks the books that fell to the floor in the night into piles that can be easily sidestepped. Champion sleeps in the living room. 

Each night he finds them reading in his bed, holding hands or brushing their calves together or rolling around with pent-up AprilandAndy energy, and each morning they’re gone like phantoms from the room by the time he drifts awake. 

He wonders what will happen when they finish all the books. 

With a snort, Andy jerks awake, fumbles his hands against the mattress until he’s kneeling. “Hey, man.” 

Ben holds up one finger so he can finish a page, then closes the book and grimaces. “It’s 3:27.” 

“Yeah, I know. Can I?” No body language context for the question. If it were April, Ben would ask for further clarification, but Andy he usually trusts not to be fucking with him, so he says, “Yeah, yeah.” 

So Andy ends up next to him, leaning against the headboard, the two of them gazing at April like she’s a mural. 

“Ben, can I ask you about something that I should probably wait to ask you about?” 

“Uh, I guess. Is it. About the aliens?” 

“Oh, no, it’s about, um. You. April and I were talking about you, and you’re super sad.”

“Thank s.” 

“No problem, but we were thinking we could be your Meg Ryans? ”

Ben bobs his head slowly until he feels too much like a pigeon and stops. “Okay, I’m missing something.”

“Aw, man, April explains it better, but she looks really peaceful right now. I don’t want to wake her up. ” Her face is half-sunk into the neck hole of her hoodie, her right hand acting as a bookmark. “Maybe I should wait. You can’t tell April I said something without her.” 

Digging the heels of his hands into his eye sockets doesn’t help. “What’s a Meg Ryan? In this conversation?”

“Would you want to maybe make out with us when you’re sad?” 

Ben pulls on his hair with one hand and reaches the other hand toward Andy. It hovers over his shoulder, patting the air there, then clenches into a loose fist. “Would I…? Is that why you’ve been sleeping in my bed? Did you buy several dozen books about alien conspiracies to seduce me?” 

Andy giggles. “What? No. Because that would be an invasion of your boundaries, right? We thought of this after we were already sleeping here. And, oh, wow. I just want to be clear.” He looks at Ben unblinkingly. “That we are in no way pressuring you into anything. Because letting us into your bed…doesn’t mean anything else.” 

As he dreamt, Andy’s stubble poked its way through his skin, his lips chapped, and his hair moved wavelike to the left. But his hand motions are smooth, his gaze steady on Ben’s face. His voice has none of the ocean sound of sleep. This is a serious conversation. Andy is being serious with him. 

“So _after_ sleeping in my bed because of aliens, you two decided you wanted to make out with me.”

“Or other stuff, if that’s what you’re into. If you want. April really does say it better.” 

“Do you want to make out with me right now?”

“I’d be up for that.”

“Do you—” The question is, “Do you do this a lot?” but Ben isn’t sure what “this” is, exactly. So he rests his mouth against Andy’s jaw and holds his head very still. Ben always got used to the water by wading in an inch at a time. Lips a little warmer, face a little hotter, maybe higher on his jaw next, maybe the corner of his mouth. 

But Andy’s mouth is on his whole mouth, so much warmth at once, his tongue scraping Ben’s teeth like he’s testing them out. Andy’s mouth could swallow him in one gulp. 

Ben pulls away. “I don’t think that I can cope with this right now.” 

And Andy looks the same as he did when he woke up, the less groomed version of how he always looks, eternally calm and slightly bemused . “That’s totally cool. Do you want me to sleep on the floor?”

“No, that’s—”

“I don’t mind. You know I used to sleep in a garbage hole?” 

“Nothing’s changed. You can stay in the bed. I just need some time to think.” 

And when did this become something he gave his blessing to? Not an _inevitably will_ , but a _can_ , so close to a _may_ , so close to a _please don’t go_. Andy lies down next to Ben and closes his eyes, lets all of the tension bleed from his face, and becomes as still as the air, just barely more still than Ben’s mind. 

 

April’s pouring Frosted Flakes into three mismatched bowls when Ben walks into the kitchen the next morning. “So is this like pity sex?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “It’s like cereal.” She moves two of the bowls to her and Andy’s side of the table and leaves the third on the counter. She can hear Andy gargling in the bathroom.

“I assume the third one’s for me?” 

“It’s for Champion. Your hair looks like devil horns.” Soft, uneven, devil horns, but in silhouette, there’d be no difference. Both his eyes are bloodshot and he scratches at the t-shirt she’s pretty sure he’s worn three days in a row.

“Champion has dog food,” he says, and takes the third bowl for himself. “Pity sex. Stick to the topic.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Andy has stopped gargling. No new noise comes from the bathroom, which means he’s eavesdropping at the door. 

“I don’t know what I’m talking about either, but I know it has something to do with Meg Ryan, and I hear you explain it _really_ well.” He sits down across from her and stares at the cereal for a moment before realizing he has no spoon and standing up to get one. April scoops the Frosted Flakes up with her hand.

“Look, I just thought it’d be hot to have a threesome, and Andy’s really cool with most things like that, and you’re not seeing anyone anymore, so who else am I gonna ask? Ann?” 

“Actually, I think Donna would probably—”

“And if you’re going to be a dick about it, just pretend Andy never said anything.” 

“So it’s not pity sex?” He sits back down at the table with a spoon, but doesn’t eat, just watches her. 

“It probably kind of is. But why’s that a bad thing? That just means we want you to feel better and we want to have sex with you. You know how many people I want to not feel bad?” 

His eyelids droop like they used to when he calculated budget cuts. “Six?”

“Shut up.” She studies her nails, runs the ragged edge of one against her teeth. “And it’s eight. Asshole.” That makes him smile, nervous and like a little kid, like Andy when she asked him, “What if we got married?” 

His mouth is full of cereal when he asks, “So are we out of milk?”

“God,” April says, stuffing more cereal in her own mouth. “Chew your food.” Ben glares. “The cow got Mad Cow Disease and died. This morning. _Literally_ kicked the bucket.” 

He does that thing where he looks off into the distance and moves his lower jaw back and forth. The motion makes his hair fall in his eyes so he looks more hipster-douchebag-eating-the-microphone than nerd-demanding-accuracy-about-breakfast. He’s silent long enough that Andy takes it as a cue to enter. 

“Oh, hey, am I interrupting something?” His hair is still wet, dripping onto his t-shirt, his eyes too wide for him to pull off casual. 

April grunts and reaches for him, pulls him down into a kiss once she has him. The overpowering taste of mint and Andy’s wet shirt crumpled in her hand and the knowledge that Ben is watching them from across the table—She knows because she opens her eyes and looks and he’s not eating his cereal at all. 

When she lets Andy go, he grabs the bowl next to hers and asks, “There’s no milk?”

“Yeah, Mad Cow Disease,” Ben offers before April can say anything. 

Andy snaps his fingers. “I could put melted cheese on this. That’s similar, right? It’s all dairy.”

“Actually—”

“That sounds amazing.” April shoves out of her chair, taking her half-eaten bowl of Frosted Flakes with her. 

It tastes a little like popcorn and a little like vomiting up bile because your stomach has nothing left to give, but Ben looks so grossed out that she wants to keep eating it forever, so she kisses Andy while they’re both chewing, and okay, maybe this is going too far, maybe the way his partially-chewed food pours into her mouth makes her never want cereal again. 

Ben stands up. “I have to go.” 

April breaks off the kiss to watch him put his bowl in the sink—she ignores the mushed cereal that falls out of their mouths and lands on her boxers—and says, “It’s not pity sex.” 

He actually blushes. “Yeah, I’m just. I’m gonna walk Champion.” 

After he leaves, Andy starts to say, “Babe, I’m so sorry I said—” but she moves to sit on his lap and laces her arms around his neck.

“It’s cool. I was awake anyway. ” She can feel the muscles in his neck relaxing. Her leg is wet where the cereal has soaked through. 

 

It turns out that Champion can run. In sweats and ratty sneakers he doesn’t think he’s worn with regularity since college gym classes, Ben runs down the sidewalk, Champion galloping unevenly ahead of him. The bones in his right arm protest being pulled taut by the leash, but the air is fast and cold in his lungs and he closes his eyes against it before it occurs to him that Champion might pull him into traffic and he opens them again.

Not once did he ever agree to go running with Chris, and Chris was relentless. Chris asked him in Highland and Georgetown and Darmstadt, asked him every morning their first couple weeks here, asked while crouched over him in shared hotel rooms at five in the morning and asked him when they were about to drive to meetings, “But wouldn’t it give a better impression if we were literally running at the problem?” 

“No,” Ben said every time, “I think it would give a better impression if we didn’t show up sweating through our clothes.” 

Now he licks sweat from the corners of his mouth and he runs and he runs and April and Andy want to be his Meg Ryans, and what does that even mean? Is that some kind of roleplaying game? Is he John Mellencamp? Are there wigs? 

As his wrist begins to rotate, it occurs to him that he should stop running, but then his arm is yanked behind his back and he’s on the ground, Champion barking and panting and pawing at his legs, the leash cutting off the circulation to Ben’s calf. So Champion isn’t the kind of dog you take on a run. Or Ben isn’t the kind of person dogs like to run with. 

When he stands up after finally untangling himself, he almost slams his face into a telephone pole. A telephone pole which a couple days earlier had a poster of Carl Scarpolini Jr. stapled to it and now just has a shred of paper hanging from a staple. 

Ben leans down to scratch behind Champion’s ears. “I guess he found his cat, huh? I sure envy whoever got that zero dollar award.” Champion licks his hand and it’s just as disgusting as the first time he ever did it. Champion barks and Ben looks up. To his immediate left is Carl Scarpolini Sr. standing at his window and watching them. The new growth of beard obscuring his mouth would normally be enough to keep Ben from recognizing him, but cradled in his arms is Carl Scarpolini Jr., who makes eye contact with Ben and lets out a high-pitched wail. 

Ben waves and Carl Scarpolini Sr. closes the blinds. Not wanting to get back to the house before April and Andy leave, Ben walks Champion to the nearest park and sits on a bench with him, watching two pigeons fight over half a Nutriyum Bar. 

 

“Good news, everyone!” Leslie stands in the middle of the office, hands fidgeting by her sides. “Okay, this isn’t actually everyone. Where’s Tom, can someone—” Through the window, April sees Tom with his Dr. Dre Beats on, his head rocking from side to side, some glittery blonde woman dancing on his screen. “Hold on. No one go anywhere! It’s really good news!” 

She emerges with her hand around Tom’s bicep, and he’s saying something about fresh silk, but Leslie pushes him away and starts again. “Good news, everyone! The raccoon population in the parks is down!”

No one says anything, so April says, “Yay.”

“Yay,” Tom echoes, smoothing his sleeve. 

“That’s it? Come on, guys. This is big news! Jerry? Donna?”

Donna’s putting on lipstick. “I don’t go in the parks.” 

Leslie slumps, one knee bent, her mouth a line. “We get at least five complaints a day about raccoons stealing people’s sandwiches or playing with their hair or trying to lure their children into the bushes. Yesterday we only got two! This is huge! 

Coffee begins pouring from the coffeemaker and Ron steps into the room, humming. 

“Great, Ron. Ron, the raccoons are dying out!” 

He gulps the coffee down without letting it cool off, says, “I make it a point never to rejoice in the depletion of any species of wildlife. Throws off the entire ecosystem. Makes hunting season a royal nightmare,” then retreats into his office. 

“Well, I’m happy. And the people of Pawnee who don’t have lake houses—” Donna shrugs “—will be happy too. There’s a town hall meeting in an hour to announce it. I am going to be reviewing my budget, so Tom and April, you’re in charge.”

April rubs at her thumbnail where she filed it down too far. “An hour?”

Leslie puts a hand on her shoulder and stares into her eyes. “I know, and I’m sorry, but I believe in you. You are a strong, tenacious woman. And it’s a happy meeting! So no one should be yelling! I think.”

She pats April on the head and goes into her office just as a noise like an engine whirring comes from Jerry and his head jerks upward. “Was that Leslie?” 

“No,” April says, and types, “WHAT TO SAY ABOUT RACCOONS,” into a Word document. 

Which is how she ends up standing in the middle of a stage, pretending her table mic is a hand-held, asking a crowd of thirty-something people, “Everyone hates raccoons, right?” There’s a general murmuring that doesn’t sound clearly like dissent or agreement. One man stands up and salutes her.

“Cool. So we all hate raccoons. Anyone noticed anything different about the raccoons?”

A woman raises her hand. She’s got sunglasses like black holes eating her face and a baseball cap smashed over her hair. “They’re getting larger,” she says when April points to her. “The other day, I saw one the size of my Great Dane. It was eating a pretzel. With mustard.”

“I don’t think that’s true. Anyone else?”

“It was wearing a shirt.”

“That was probably a person. Anyone?” She looks over her shoulder at Tom, who’s on his iPad. Wind blows the door open and scatters the papers she left on the table, so no raccoon statistics unless she makes them up. 

From somewhere in the back: “Are they changing colors?”

“No.”

“Do they have wings?”

“No.”

“Are they—”

“No. Everything you say is wrong.” She takes a deep breath, tries again. “Did you know that Pawnee has more raccoons than any other town in central Indianna?”

The guy who saluted her shouts, “Yeah, USA!” Tacks a belated fistpump onto the end. 

“Well…maybe not for any longer. The raccoon population is on a huge downswing. Yeah, they’re disappearing like all over the place. In the past week, only six people have been hospitalized from raccoon-related injuries. That’s down from fifteen per week last month.” The number sounds low, but she goes with it. “That’s nine less. Which is, uh.” 

“Sixty percent decrease,” Tom says. When she looks at him, he’s closing a calculator app. “So look out, raccoons of Pawnee. Because nature got tired of you.” 

There’s a round of applause. Tom slips his iPad into his bag and gets up to leave. Everyone else does too, except for a little girl in a shirt with the Earth on it who stands on her chair and yells, “Wait!” Three people wait. “What’s killing the raccoons?” 

“Uh, God! Thank you everyone. Goodnight.” April drops the mic and brushes past Tom, saying, “Let’s get the hell out of here before she talks again.” 

 

Some days, April and Andy meet up and go home together and some days Andy stays late to make sure Leslie doesn’t fall asleep at her desk, but today, Andy gets home first. Ben’s reading on the steps, not much further in his book than when he saw Carl Scarpolini Sr. putting up the posters that have since been ripped down. A headache blooms behind his ears. It’s tempting to throw the book into the street and go inside; he already knows more about Bernie Madoff than anyone else in this town ( _almost_ anyone, he catches himself). 

Andy sits next to him and takes Ben’s water, throat undulating as it slowly pulls in half the contents of the bottle. Printer ink marks his brow. Ben holds up one hand so Andy can see where it is, then reaches forward and tries to wipe the ink away. It stays where it is, so Ben’s thumb is just brushing Andy’s face without purpose. 

“Do I have something on my face?”

Ben pulls his hand away. “Yeah. It’ll probably come off on its own, though.”

Andy squints. “It’s really bright out here. I thought that was something you hated.”

He is darkness. He is the night. “Actually. Yeah, I kind of do. Do you want to go inside? And make dinner or something?” 

Andy bounds in ahead of him and is greeted by Champion, who’s carrying an entire pillow in his mouth. Ben walks past them, leaving his book on the couch, and Andy picks it up a moment later. “Hey, who’s Bernie Madoff?” 

“He ran a huge financial scam. What do you want to make?” Calzone ingredients litter the countertop. Ben puts them away as Andy enters the kitchen behind him, his shirt newly coated in Champion’s fur. Andy opens a cabinet and pulls out a box of pancake mix, showing it off like Vanna White. Ben shrugs and locates a pan. 

Slicing a browning banana to throw in the mix, Andy says, “It’s cool how you know so much about finance. Money. Getting paid.”

“I’m unemployed.” 

“Still.” He nicks his thumb with the knife and hisses; Ben digs through a drawer for a Band-Aid. “Maybe I need a specialty like that.”

“Well, you should be a veritable expert on aliens by now.” 

Andy points the knife at him. “That’s true. I could be an alientologist. PhD. When people think there are aliens in their town, they call me up, like a Ghostbuster. I could have my own reality show and line of merchandising with my face on it.” 

Ben puts the Band-Aid on his finger for him, takes over the slicing. Imagines Andy on TV, advising people to hide in someone else’s bed until the aliens go away. Andy playing Burt Macklin like an _X-Files_ parody. People tuning in every day to watch Andy jump around and tell people they’re safe now. 

“Yeah,” he says, “You probably could.” 

 

They’re deep in the flow of pancake-making when April gets home. Five plates of pancakes are already on the table, and Andy’s flipping more onto a sixth plate as Ben says, “I don’t think that’s clean. Something dried to it,” but doesn’t stop him. 

Andy says, “If it’s dry, it’s safe, right?” puts the plate down, and notices April. He’s got ink on his forehead and pancake batter on his chin and a Band-Aid on his thumb. “Hey, babe. We made a lot of dinner.” 

She walks to him and licks the batter off his face. “You didn’t invite people over, did you?” 

“Yeah,” Ben says, leaning against the counter with his sleeves rolled up, “These are for my book club. We’re going to discuss Tolstoy’s use of—” She throws a piece of pancake at him. “Ow, not ow, I’m joking. We just made an unnecessarily large amount of food.” 

Champion eats the floor pancake. April narrows her eyes at Ben and says, “Like your book club wouldn’t be reading a Star Wars novelization.” She knows it’s weak, distracts him by picking up a plate. “I don’t think we have syrup.”

Ben opens a drawer that April always assumed was empty and pulls out a fistful of foil-covered maple syrup cups with double Js stamped over the real logo. 

“Where did you—” she begins, then remembers going through Leslie’s bag to find her agenda for her once and finding a couple dozen maple syrups instead. “Oh. Never mind.” 

They look at each other, Ben furrowing his brow. Andy says, “Awesome,” and reaches between them, takes all of the cups, scatters them across the table. 

They don’t come anywhere near finishing the pancakes, even though they probably feed too many of them to Champion. A stack of leftovers takes over one plate that they take turns prodding at before acknowledging defeat.

Lips and fingers sticky with syrup, one leg crossed over Andy’s and her face in the crook of his neck and shoulder, April asks Ben, “Do you wanna watch us have sex?”

She looks up to see Andy biting his lip. His hand moves to her thigh. They’ve talked about this, repeatedly, since Andy first muttered to her as they were falling asleep after a Mouserat show, “I just really like when people look at me. I mean, I love when you look at me, but—in general, it feels cool.” 

Ben drops his fork, picks it up, sets it down gently. His eyes focus on a point over her shoulder. “No. Yes. Actually, I’d probably like that a lot.” 

“Do you wanna watch us have sex right now?” 

“No, I’m going to wash the dishes before the syrup cements itself to the—” He gestures meaninglessly. “Yes? Yes, right now. If that’s okay with both of you.”

“No, I was asking right now so we could schedule an appointment. I’ll have my secretary call your secretary.”

“Babe, you are your own secretary.”

“Damn. Guess it will have to be now.” Andy laughs, shoulder vibrating against the hollow of her throat so she feels for a second like she’s choking. 

Ben nods, his mouth open a little, and Andy and April kiss, Andy pulling her further on top of him until she’s no longer in her chair at all.

Ben says, “I’m not going to watch you have sex at the dinner table,” and April pulls Andy’s dick out of his jeans. “Okay, I guess I am going to watch you have sex at the dinner table. All right, I can—”

“Stop talking,” April says, muffled against Andy’s lips, but he must hear her, because he does. She bites at Andy’s jaw, his neck, unbuttons his shirt halfway so she can pull it aside and dig her teeth in where his shoulder tastes like sweat.

Andy’s pulling down her tights and her underwear and there’s Ben’s voice again, asking, “Don’t you need a condom, or?”

“Dude, I’m on birth control. And stop talking unless you’re going to say something good. You’re ruining the mood.” 

He drums his fingers against the table, gets up to wash the plates in the sink after all, and she likes to think that he’s timed the scrubbing of brush against plate with her breathing on purpose because why, why would he do that. He goes to lean against the wall when he’s done, watches April raising and lowering herself with one hand on Andy’s shoulder and the other tugging at his hair. 

April says, “You can come closer if you want.” 

He takes one step, two, ends up maybe a foot away from them, hands hanging by his sides.

Andy turns his head, and he’s grinning, his eyes wide. “Hey, man,” he says. “It’s really cool that you’re doing this. We’ve talked about this a lot. Like you don’t even want to know.” He laughs, and April snorts, which makes him laugh more. 

“Jesus,” Ben says, and April rolls her eyes.

“I said say something _good_.” 

 

Ben dreams of being lost in the Chicago subway system. Tunnels fuse together and split apart, spitting him back and forth between their mouths. Chris keeps running past, saying he’s late, but every time Ben tries to follow him, Chris steps sideways into the wall. Ben’s kneeling on the floor, trying to draw a map in the accumulated dirt, when a noise startles him awake.

To his right, April and Andy lie tangled and unmoving. No light breaches the curtains. His shirt clings to his back, soaked with sweat, so he pulls it off and throws it to the floor. 

There’s the noise again, like a clothes dryer buzzing in the distance. And it could be, he supposes, the neighbors doing laundry. But he finds himself pulled out of bed and down the hallway, into April and Andy’s bedroom. 

Champion stands beneath the window, growling. An arc of red light bisects the empty bed. The noise is louder no¬¬w, and more constant, a thrum that makes Ben’s temples ache. He presses himself to the wall and extends his neck to look out the window. He ignores the dog nuzzling at his pants leg. 

Something large and dark edges into view, right before a shock of bright light temporarily blinds him. He drops to the floor, crawls in the direction of what he thinks is the closet. Somewhere, April and Andy are yelling, but the noise is too loud, drilled too far into his head, and the only other sound he can make out properly is Champion barking. 

When the world goes quiet, he’s lying against the closet door, cheek smashed against arm. Hands tilt his face upward—soft hands, April’s hands. He can make her out now, her sticking-up bangs and clenched jaw. 

“Hey!” she says, “Hey. Look at me. You better not be concussed.” 

He tries to twist away, but her grip is firm. “I’m not concussed.”

“Then who’s…the Secretary of the Treasury?” 

“Geithner.”

She lets go. “Well. I don’t know if that’s right or not, but I guess we won’t take you to the hospital. But only because I don’t feel like driving.” 

The room floods with light and Andy runs in. His Adam’s apple jumps as he looks from April to Ben to the window to the hallway behind him. 

“Andy?” April asks.

Ben says it before Andy has to. “Champion’s gone.” 

 

Burt Macklin doesn’t set up a caution tape perimeter or go out and hassle the neighbors. Instead, Andy sits on the living room couch, watching Champion’s bed from across the room like it’ll tell him something. He steeples his fingers against his mouth, pulls in his shoulders so he looks smaller than April’s ever thought of him. 

She brings him leftover macaroni and cheese on a real plate and he finally looks up.

“Oh, April, you didn’t have to do that.”

“Duh,” she says, and sits down with him, leaning her head on his shoulder. 

Ben watches from the doorway, arms crossed, hip canted. Still shirtless, like when they found him, but with his Docs on and unlaced. It would make more sense to be comforting him right now, but his face has closed off. Gone are the fear in his eyes and the blood on his lip where he bit it open. 

She steals the fork from Andy’s unmoving hand and spears a piece of pasta on each prong. It tastes like impending mold. She puts the fork back in Andy’s hand and he twirls it between his fingers, then slowly starts eating. “Hey, I’ll be back,” she says, sliding away from him. 

“Yeah, I’ll be here.” Cheese sauce and saliva garble the words. 

April walks into Ben’s bedroom and tears it to pieces. Or maybe there are more steps in between. April walks into Ben’s bedroom and aims a kick at his nightstand and misses, which only makes her more eager to destroy something. There’s a phantom pain where her foot didn’t connect. Her nerve endings are on fire.

April walks into Ben’s bedroom— _her_ bedroom, _Andy’s_ bedroom—and takes a book from the top of the stack and throws it at the wall. Another book grazes the doorway and another book hits the ceiling fixture and another she tugs between two hands before giving up and slamming it onto the bed. 

April walks into the bedroom and picks up the box the books came in and throws it against the headboard and lets out a silent scream. 

Ben walks into their bedroom and stands behind her and doesn’t say anything. She’s afraid of what her face looks like right now and doesn’t want him to see, so she takes his hand and pulls him onto the bed with her. They lie like double quotation marks, Ben’s face at the nape of her neck.

“He’s just sitting there,” she says, and Ben says, “Maybe books aren’t the answer.” 

Bending his fingers back, “You’re the one who didn’t want to use lightsabers.” And yeah, she’s just saying it to piss him off, because yeah, he doesn’t even have a lightsaber, but there’s just his breath like a hand on her neck and a change in the angle of his mattress as he shifts his weight. 

“Look, a book is like a conversation, but where one person’s using a script. Which can be useful to a point, but after a point, you’re better off having a conversation where no one’s parts are scripted.”

Fuck how her face looks. She almost rolls over his body in excitement, but stops with her knees on top of his, looking down at him. “Alien abductee meeting.” 

He has to twist his neck to look at her. “I was thinking just talk to Ron some more, but yeah, what you said sounds great.” 

They’re both silent until April asks, “Can I like kiss you right now?” 

His eyebrows twitch upward, but he says, “Yeah, okay,” and she ignores the part of her brain that hears him saying, “Pity sex,” because the other part of her brain is in her mouth and in his mouth and being drowned out by the white noise of his stubble scraping her chin.

She jumps off of him and runs to where Andy’s still sitting on the couch but has at least eaten all the macaroni. Maybe she looks too happy, but maybe that’s what Andy needs. She punches him in the arm and he looks up.

“Hey,” she says. “Road trip.” 

 

First, Ben returns the books. It’s part a symbolic gesture of his devotion to action, part a desire to get them out of his room, part guilt dragging him through the doors of City Hall. He sits in the parking lot with the box on the passenger seat, removing all the Post-It notes and stacking them for later use. Thirty-eight typos that will never be fixed. 

Walking through the hall with the box in his arms feels like replaying the day he cleared out his desk. He’s wearing a real shirt and Andy patted down his hair before he left so it looks combed. Councilwoman Jarret averts her eyes when they pass each other though, so probably not that combed, unless she was too distracted by his under-eye shadows to even notice the hair. 

When he gets to the Parks department, he doesn’t go in, just stands in the doorway and peers inside. Donna looks up from her Sudoku and concern shows on her face before she covers it up by smirking at him, raising her eyebrows. He opens his mouth, but doesn’t say anything, and neither does she; she just keeps looking at him until finally he steps into the room and says, “Hey. All.” 

“Oh, Ben! It’s so great to see you,” Jerry says, standing with his arms out like he’s about to pull Ben into a hug.

“Yeah, you too. No, I, uh.” Ben lifts the box a little higher. “Arms full. But it’s great to see you guys. It’s great.” 

Her pen moving again, Donna says, “I see unemployment’s treating you well. You’ve must have a lot of time for your Game of Thrones and World of Warcraft raids.” 

“I—I don’t play that game. That game costs money to keep playing.” The box gets heavier. Donna looks up at him through her eyelashes and bits of silver in her eyeshadow catch the light and he remembers telling April that she’d be better off having a threesome with Donna than with him.

But April and Andy wouldn’t be April and Andy if they didn’t have poor judgment. 

Behind him, April says, “Yeah, he just plays Pacman all day. If you dress up like a ghost he’ll run away from you and cry. It’s really fun.” 

Ben turns his head and his body follows. “And thank you for that. Is Ron in?” 

She’s filing her nails on a sanding block, staring up at him solemnly. “Yeah, he knows you’re coming.” 

“April, I don’t think you should—”

“Quiet, Jerry.” 

Ben drums his fingers against the box. “Is Leslie—”

“She has a meeting. You should hurry up, though. If she sees you you’ll throw her off and then she’ll pretend you didn’t throw her off and she’ll drink more Coolwhip and it’ll be really annoying, so. Go in.” 

Raw meat spreads across Ron’s desk in unwrapped tinfoil, snakes claws up the insides of Ben’s nostrils. To the right of the desk, Ron strikes a match, starting a fire in his trash can. “Close the door,” he says without looking up. 

Ben puts the box on the floor. “Yeah, here are your books, so I’m going to—”

“I hear you received an alien visitation.” Ron still won’t look at him, placing a metal grate atop the trash can instead. 

“I received something. Is there not a smoke detector in here?”

“And I also hear you’re going to Muncie to learn more.” He places a shapeless slab of meat on the grate. 

“Yeah, well, I thought with Champion being taken that April and Andy might want more answers.”

“April is a smart girl, and Andy—I like Andy. But this isn’t _Star Trek_. Aliens are a serious threat, and if you get either of them into something they can’t handle, I will not hesitate to shoot you in the leg.” 

“So a non-fatal shot, then?” Ron looks at him. “Right. Got it. We’ll be safe. There really should be a smoke detector in here.”

Ron nods. “I uninstalled it the day I got this job. You can go now.” He turns away, prods at the meat with what Ben hopes is only a model of a Civil War-era musket, and moans. 

 

Donna has no patience for subtlety. The moment Ben leaves, she sidles up to April’s desk, leans down, and whispers into the space between them, “Now why did Ben need to see Ron?”

Two yellow blocks in a row and April’s almost brushing the limits of the Tetris sky. “Don’t worry about it. It’s about aliens.” 

“I didn’t think Ron was into science fiction.”

“No, like real aliens. Like—” April pauses to lift her coffee mug and fly it through the air. “Oooh.” 

“Are you being serious with me right now?” Blocks upon blocks and April quits before she has to see herself lose. By her elbow is Donna’s splayed hand, mermaid scale manicure and lemongrass lotion reminding April that yesterday’s mascara has become today’s eyeliner and that her skin itches with the need to shower. 

“Yeah. Ben and Ron were discussing real aliens. Because aliens kidnapped our dog last night and we are going to go talk to some experts to find out how to stop them, I guess.” 

“Are you all in some kind of cult? You know the history this town has with cults. I have a friend who specializes in undoing brainwashing, but he is expensive.” 

Chess is easier to lose than Tetris; at least she can pretend to throw the game on purpose. “Yeah, we’re in a cult. No aliens here. You caught us. Call your friend right up.”

Donna purses her lips, shoves at a paperweight on April’s desk, and starts to go. Stops herself. “Do I need to be worried?”

The words are clipped, carefully chosen, and April looks up, meets her eyes. “Do you have a safehouse?”

“Yes.”

“Then yeah. It might be worth it to worry.” 

April likes to push all of her pawns out from the start, likes the way her pawns gobble up the computer’s pawns and the computer’s pawns gobble hers up right back. Likes to strip the match down to the bone, down to the big players. Likes chess best when it’s a battle of gods.

As much as she likes anything about chess, that is. It’s not like she’s a nerd. It’s not like she’s Ben. 

 

The drive from Pawnee to Muncie is anticlimactically short, just twenty miles, but April stuffs two suitcases in the trunk before they go. 

“It’s a road trip,” she says when Ben asks. “Didn’t you have a childhood?”

“Ha, he spent his childhood being a mayor,” Andy calls over the roof of the car.

Ben sighs, gets in the driver seat. “That came later.” 

April and Andy both put on sunglasses for the drive, Andy’s pair designed to look menacing and April’s shaped like hearts. “Hey, who am I?” she asks, stretching one leg onto the dashboard, a paperback laid open on her stomach. 

Andy’s asleep in the backseat, body half slumped onto the floor, a sweatshirt draped blanket-like across his chest. They’re halfway there and alone on the road. NPR is almost inaudible from April’s gradually turning it down every time she thinks Ben isn’t paying attention.

“You know,” Ben says, stretching the fingers of one hand away from the wheel, “considering the actual age difference between us, maybe that’s not the best joke.”

April pushes the sunglasses onto her head, blows a bubble with her gum before spitting it into her hand. “Fine, you’re not into that. Noted.” Stretches the gum between her fingers, balls it back up. 

She unbuckles her seat belt and as Ben asks, “Wait, what are you—” leans into the back and switches her sunglasses with Andy’s. His snoring is uninterrupted, his face smooth. She settles into her seat and molds the gum into a small gun, makes _pow_ noises as she aims it at Ben.

“You’re into power and unpredictability,” she says in a voice disturbingly similar to Andy’s when he’s being Burt Macklin. Maybe the voice is all in the sunglasses. 

“I’m into people,” Ben says. 

She flips her book over and maybe looks at it, maybe doesn’t, maybe has her eyes closed behind the sunglasses, says, “Wow, Ben, you really know yourself,” ice queen voice and barely moving lips. But her legs stretch and recoil, calf muscles tighten and relax. 

Eight and half miles to their first—please only—meeting of the Alien Experiencers of Muncie, Indiana. 

 

Muncie is like every small town in every horror movie where some college kids’ too-nice car breaks down and leaves them stranded. After driving in circles trying to locate legible street signs—Ben trying to locate them, Andy sleeping, April reading some predictable medical thriller—they pull up in front of a church. The lawn is just short of manicured, cast into shadow by a fat tree. One spire juts out like a white flag held high in the air, twice the height of the rest of the building and super fucking sharp. 

She shakes Andy awake with a hand on his ankle. “Honey, look out the window. We’re still somewhere no one would ever willingly visit. It’s great.” 

He comes to with the word “ontological” sliding from his lips, her heart-shaped sunglasses falling down his nose. 

“You wanna trade back?” she asks, tapping his pair against her face, and he takes a moment to process before saying, “Nah. These are still pretty intimidating. And those look hot on you.” He raises an eyebrow. “Roberta Macklin.” 

“God, shut up,” she says, but she’s smiling, kisses his wrist before getting out of the car. 

Arms crossed, hair standing up like he’s just run a hand through it, Ben leans against the driver’s door and watches the church; it doesn’t move. Shocking.

She stands next to him, copying his position, and Andy joins her so they’re all leaning and crossing their arms and looking like a row of gargoyles keeping watch. “Does Muncie seem…” Ben starts.

“Really boring?” 

“Where is everyone?” Andy asks.

“Yeah, as I was saying.” Ben tilts his head, squints one eye. “Does Muncie seem empty to you?” 

Okay, so they didn’t pass anyone while they were driving in, and the ratatat of wind-stirred trash is the only noise around, but. “Maybe they’re _all_ at the meeting.” April pushes off of the car and Andy falls in step behind her, Ben, after a pause, behind him. 

But as they approach, she can see, formerly hidden in the tree’s shadow, the heavy padlock on the church door, and the paper hanging off, one corner come loose of its tape. Andy reaches around her to rip the sign away “Run while you still can,” he reads. “Huh. That’s so weird. I wonder what that means.” 

“Comic sans?” Ben says. “That’s menacing.” 

April has already started back to the car, twisting her hair up and off of her neck, suddenly too hot and too cold at once, icewater and ashes. She turns and they’re both still just standing there, features grayed out, so she opens the door and gets in, grips the steering wheel too tight. 

“We need to go!” she yells. Punches the horn and there’s nothing in this town to swallow the noise. 

 

April doesn’t talk while she drives. Just tunes the radio to an oldies station and cranks it up all the way. Andy leans forward, no seatbelt—Ben tries not to pictures him hurtling through the window shield—his chin on the back of April’s seat, his fingers making curlicues of her hair. Grey night slowly edges its way across the sky, but they’ve still got their sunglasses on like black bars of anonymity. 

Ben pulls at a loose thread on his tee shirt, winds the thread around his fingers cat’s cradlewise, pulls and pulls and what if he kept pulling until he had no shirt at all? _Hey guys, I’m accidentally half-naked_. Anything to make April not shut up anymore. 

Andy murmurs something, but Ben can’t hear it over “Midnight Train to Georgia,” probably isn’t meant to. They’d make a good Bonnie and Clyde, eyeless and thin-lipped and leaning forward as one, and he’d make a good guy watching _Bonnie and Clyde_ alone in his living room with a bowlful of stale popcorn. 

They’re back in Pawnee, not too far from home, when something hits the car with a dull thud and Andy screams, “Holy shit!” in Ben’s ear and April’s elbow flails out into the horn and the front half of the car ends up on the sidewalk. At least Andy doesn’t go flying, only the Lolita glasses, before he bangs his head against April’s seat, and yeah, that’ll be a black eye tomorrow, but they’re all alive.

Ben looks down and April is holding his hand. Or he’s squeezing hers white and boneless. His grip eases up, he cracks his neck to one side, and they’re still holding hands when he asks, “What was that?” 

“I don’t know!” April says, her voice shooting upward, but Andy points between them, mouth hanging open.

Raccoons. Three at first, but more appear, glow-in-the-dark eyes and hooked paws, climbing on top of one another like cheerleaders in a pyramid. Through his window, Ben can see them scuttling around, indistinct shapes in the shadows of the houses. One leaps at the windowshield, growling loud enough to be heard over “Folsom Prison Blues,” and the three of them scream.

“Leslie said the raccoons were disappearing,” April says, looking over her shoulder as she reverses, shaking the offending raccoon off. 

Ben is momentarily distracted by the fact that she’s stopped acting like the name will break him, then brings himself back to the growing mob of raccoons in the headlights. “Well, apparently, they’re back, so.”

“Andy, get the—” she says, and Andy, rooting through the trunk, calls, “Already on it!” From April’s two suitcases, he pulls steak knives; butcher knives; long, curved knives with ornately carved sheaths; a Super Soaker; a can of mace; and Ben’s Batman suit. 

“Here.” Andy hands it to him. “You should put this on.” 

Ben grips the edges of his seat, sliding around as another raccoon launches itself at the car. “I don’t think this will help. Why do you have so many knives?”

April’s face contorts like a taxidermied bear’s. “I didn’t know what we would need to fight aliens!” 

“But why—”

“I like knives, okay? Knives are cool. Put on the suit. Unless you want to get alien zombie rabies the moment you leave the car.”

“Which I will be doing where?”

“Home.” She spins the car in a wide u-turn and Ben’s head hits the roof at they drive over a bump. Pothole, beer bottle, alien zombie raccoon roadkill. 

 

Super soaker cradled in Andy’s arms and loaded with pepper water, an unsheathed knife in each of April’s hands, April and Andy lean out of their windows and keep guard as Batman approaches the house. Night has finally fallen on Pawnee. A sliver of Ben’s face appears from the darkness as he turns to look back at them, and April pushes Andy’s sunglasses into her hair, mouths at him, “Go.”

The raccoons haven’t followed; the street is dead. All they can hear are Ben’s footsteps and the swooshing of cape against ground. “Honey,” Andy says, and April wants to shush him, but she also wants to be sitting closer to him right now, so she compromises by asking, “Yeah?”

“What do we do if it’s not all clear?”

“Donna has a safehouse.”

“And do you know where this safehouse is?”

“Not yet.” The rattling of keys as Ben reaches the front door. “Shh, raise your gun a little more.” 

The door opens smoothly and Ben disappears just inside. A minute passes, maybe less; April could believe time’s slowed down since she hit that first raccoon. Then Ben returns to the doorway, says, “I think it’s safe to come—”

Long, deep growl like a garbage dispenser. Ben falling forward onto the porch. Andy throwing open the car door and running toward him and April says, “No, Andy, wait,” but he does have the gun and he’s already got a hand on Ben’s masked face. Another growl, and something jumps over Andy and Ben, comes running toward the car. April’s got her knives at the ready, but as the thing gets closer, she realizes it’s not a raccoon.

It’s Champion. 

She rolls up the windows. Champion’s a few inches away from the door when she slams it open, knocking him back through the air. Knocking him unconscious. 

She walks to Ben and Andy slowly, stepping over Champion, glancing over her shoulder in case the raccoons have finally tracked them down. Ben gets to his feet, his arm around Andy’s shoulder, pushes the mask up. Bloody nose, Bloody lip. scraped forehead. April presses her fingers to his hairline to make sure there are no bumps, smoothes his eyebrow where the hairs are going the wrong way.

Andy says, “Not that we don’t trust you, man, but maybe you should stop going places alone,” and Ben laughs.

“I think it tried to bite my shoulder, but the cape—”

“Yeah, uh,” April says, “That wasn’t an ‘it’.” 

“What? You don’t seriously think that was a person.” 

His weight drops onto April, almost knocking her over, when Andy sees Champion passed out by the car. 

“Champion! Oh my god, the aliens brought him back.” He crouches down, running a finger along Champion’s teeth before pulling it away quickly. “Alien zombie rabies.” Dries his finger on Champion’s fur. He looks up and his face is so open, so trusting, his pupils dilated and mouth hanging open. “Come on, we’ve gotta get him in the car.” 

“Andy,” Ben says, “The aliens brought Champion back wrong. We have to leave him.” 

But Andy’s halfway to cradling Champion in his arms, is stroking the top of his head. “Honey?” he asks.

April looks between him and Ben. Places her hand on Ben’s shoulder and squeezes. “Champion’s a member of this family too, okay? We’ll get him fixed. I mean cured.” 

And it could be the aftershock of the attack, but Ben nods, puts his hand on her hand and squeezes back. 

 

Without his cape, Ben burrows into the passenger seat, keeps his arms crossed over his chest and his fingers digging into his shoulders. Champion’s in the trunk, cape tied in various places around him to restrain his mouth and limbs when he comes to. April had a roll of duct tape in one of the suitcases, and they used almost the entire thing keeping the knots in place. 

Every now and then, Andy swerves to avoid what he thinks are raccoons but could be pigeons or garbage or his imagination. Behind them, April says, “There’s no service. Great.”

Andy takes one hand off the wheel to snap. “Yeah, it’s probably the, uh, electromagnetism from the UFO.” He grins at Ben, and Ben manages a smile. 

“That’s great, honey, but do you know how to stop the electromagnetism from the UFO.”

“I did not get that far in my research, no.” Both hands back on the wheel, eyes on the road. 

“Then I hope one of you’s been having an illicit affair with Donna and knows how to get to her lake house, because we kind of don’t have any other options.” 

Aliens must be watching their house, Andy had said. They’d left Champion as bait and would take them all in their sleep. Carl Scarpolini Sr. and his demon spawn cat, Ben realized then. 

A streetlight fizzles out as they pass. The night will swallow them whole. 

“I think Ron’s got a cabin,” Ben says. “By a lake. Leslie told me she went there.” April hits him in the shoulder, but her hand doesn’t pull away.

“Say that sooner! Can you figure out how to get there?” 

“Yeah, I—I think I can.” Her hand wraps around the back of his neck, warm and moist, and Ben leans into the touch.

No lights are on in the cabin, but then, he’s not sure there’s electricity. Nothing stirs in the woods. “What are we going to do with Champion?” Ben asks. “That cape won’t hold him for long once he wakes up, and if we’re in Ron’s cabin—”

“Suitcase,” April says, nodding. “We can leave it unzipped enough for him to breathe.”

Andy manhandles Champion into the suitcase and they roll up the windows, lock the doors; the night is cool enough that there’s no chance he’ll overheat. They wind their way down the path to Ron’s house, Andy with the Super Soaker, April with the knives, Ben holding the can of mace in one gauntleted hand and a butcher knife in the other. 

When they knock on the door, there’s a long silence. Long enough that Ben says, “Maybe it’s unlocked.” He pushes on the door and it gives. He turns to tell April and Andy they can go in, and a gun cocks by his head.

“Don’t move.” 

 

Candlelight throws Ron’s face into relief, but Ben’s back is still turned and April and Andy might be too consumed by shadows for Ron to even know they’re there. If they say anything , he could startle, blow Ben’s brains out. She clamps one hand over Andy’s mouth, winces and hopes that the blade of the knife missed his face.

“Raise your hands and drop any and all weapons.” The knife and mace fall softly to the path. “Turn around.” Ben looks like he wants to run, but he turns, and April is glad he pushed the mask up, doesn’t know what Ron would make of Batman breaking into his secret lair. 

“Ron,” Ben says, and Ron asks, “Are you one of them now?”

“One of—No, I’m. April and Andy are behind me. We’re all still us. We’re looking for a safehouse. The door was unlocked. We didn’t know if you were here. Could you please not point a gun at me anymore.”

He must lower the gun, because Ben’s shoulders slump, and Ron pushes him aside, holds the candle out further into the dark so it flickers across April and Andy’s faces. They raise their hands in the air, holding their weapons aloft. His chest expands and contracts heavily with breath, and he gestures to the door with his head, tells them, “Come in.” 

He locks the door behind them, rests the gun against the door, and leaves the candle on a table with several others. More are scattered throughout the room. April bites her lip, takes in all the flame and wood and the cot in the corner. She looks back to Ron and his moustache is trembling. 

He says, “I thought I’d never see you again,” and suddenly, April is pressed against his chest, her face in his shoulder. “But I always knew you were a fighter.” She lifts her arms to hug him back, then stops herself.

“Knives,” she says by way of explanation. 

He pulls back, coughs, composes himself. “Andrew. Ben.” 

“Where’s everyone else?” Andy asks as he places his Super Soaker on the floor. His face, thankfully, is unharmed, save for the swelling skin around his eye.

“They’re all at Donna’s lake house, much to her chagrin. Jerry’s in Muncie.”

“RIP Jerry,” Ben says, and Ron looks down, mmms. 

“I take it the meeting wasn’t there?”

“No one was there. It was like a ghost town.” 

Ron checks the windows, tapping at their locks. “I imagine Pawnee’s the same now. Animal control was the first to fall. The libraries will probably be the last. Strongholds of inequity, right to the end.” He rests against a nearby table, watching the three of them. Andy tilts Ben’s chin up to get a better look at his cuts and scrapes. April’s arms swing through the air without purpose.

“Do you have a workshop or whatever here?” 

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

“We need you to make us a cage.”

“What size?”

She meets his eyes, and he holds her gaze. “Champion-sized.”

“I see.” 

“And could we have some first aid stuff?” Andy asks, his hand still around Ben’s jaw. “That would be awesome, Ron, thanks.” 

 

The peroxide’s sting makes Ben jerk his head away from Andy’s hand. Makes him bang his head into the wall. “Hey, hey,” Andy says. “I’m trying to heal you, not make you more. Unhealed.” The mattress sags as Andy climbs up next to him.

“Yeah, sorry. Low pain threshold.” 

Andy cards the hand not holding the cotton through Ben’s hair. Calluses. “Come on, man. Think Batman. Batman doesn’t even have a pain threshold. Batman eats broken glass instead of cereal and puts nails in his drinks instead of ice cubes.” 

“Batman,” Ben says, closing his eyes, and the sting is back, but so is the soft cotton, held firmly against the wound. “What does that make you, Alfred?” 

“Of course, Master Benjamin.” Andy says, awful English accent and lilting syllables. Ben opens one eye and Andy shakes his head. “Or, I don’t know. I could be Robin. Or April could be Robin. We could both be Robin!” 

“Mmm. April should be Batman.” Closes his eyes again. The ripping of Band-Aid papers. Andy smoothing latex against the bridge of his nose. Smoothing and smoothing and resting there.

“Yeah. She’d be good at that.” 

“I’m Alfred,” Ben says. He lays his head in Andy’s lap, and Andy’s hand grips his hair, his legs shifting to balance the new weight better.

“We could all be Batman. Has there been more than one Batman?”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “There’s been more than one Batman.” Sleep wraps its hand around his throat, presses against his chest. He yawns and Andy’s grip loosens, though his fingers stay at Ben’s scalp. It’s hot in the cabin, all that flame, and Andy’s hand is hotter, but Ben dips his head further toward him anyway. “I don’t think three Batmans ever slept together, though.”

“Well, they still haven’t really.” He sounds far away.

“They will,” Ben murmurs. “Three Batmans. Yeah.” 

 

Ron’s spare welding goggles are too big for April, so she has to hold them up with one hand while she watches him work. Even with her cardigan off and her sleeves rolled up past her shoulders, she’s sweating. She pulls at the band of her bra, scratching. The cage is still developing, looks more like modern art than anything functional. 

“You need to put him down,” Ron says, like he’s asking her to pass a wrench. He keeps welding, though, keeps building the cage he disapproves of.

“Who, the rabid accountant?” He doesn’t laugh, so she takes a step closer. “I know. But Andy needs him.” She needs him too, but it’s not like she can say that. 

“He’s got you. He’s got…Ben, apparently, and before you ask, no, I do not need to know more of that story. I’m happy for you all. It’ll hurt him at first, but he’ll heal and he’ll move on.”

“Well, we’re probably all gonna die soon anyway, so. We might as well be happy while we can.”

Ron turns off the blowtorch. For a moment, she’s afraid that it’s a permanent kind of turning it off, that they will have to shoot their alien zombie dog. Then Ron walks to her and rests his hands on her shoulders. “All right. Then you can stay here tonight. I’ll build you this cage, give you some guns, but in the morning, you need to clear out and take the dog with you.” 

She nods, and he pats her arm, musses her hair in a way that indicates he’s never done that to anyone in his life. He returns to the bench, turns the blowtorch back on. “I’ll be fine here. You should get some sleep.” 

“Thanks,” she says. Tries to smile, but grimaces instead. Leaves the goggles on a bench on her way out. 

 

When Ben wakes up, he’s on top of Andy’s heaving chest, April’s head lolling against his leg. She’s awake, tapping her fingers on the floor. Still foggy, he says, “Hey, chum,” and giggles, and she looks up. His tongue comes out to lick at his lips, which are dry and still taste faintly of his own blood. Wordlessly, April passes him a glass of water, the imprint of her lips fading from the condensation. 

“There’s running water here?”

“No. Ron’s got like a whole in-case-of-apocalypse closet, with bottled water and canned food and firewood, and. Nuclear launch buttons.” 

“And he’s sharing?” 

“Just until we leave later.” 

“He doesn’t like the dog. I don’t blame him.”

“He can tell you how to get to Donna’s lake house, you know. If that’s what you want. While we find someone who can make Champion the same again.”

Ben sits up, ensconced between Andy’s sprawling legs. “Do you want me to do that?”

“Not really.” A candle close to the cot burns out. The shadowy ravine between April’s nose and eye deepens, darkens. Ben inclines his head.

“Come on. There’s room up here for you somewhere.” 

He takes her hand and guides her up, but as she’s sliding her shoes off, he tugs, and she trips, one crossed calf hitting the other. Lands with her rib cage covering Ben’s face, and judging by the muffled, “Ow,” from Andy, the rest of her on top of him. 

“Way to fuck up, Ben,” she says, but there’s no edge to her voice, so he nudges her with his head, says, “Thanks.” 

“Is it morning?” Andy asks, and Ben realizes he isn’t sure. All the windows have blackout curtains.

“No,” April says. “We’ve got a while until morning.” 

“Three Batmans?” Andy asks, shifting April closer to the wall so Ben can breathe. 

“What?”

Ben clarifies, “Do you want to have sex in a really small bed while Ron’s in the next room on what may or may not be the last night of our lives?” 

April tangles her legs with his. “Ron’s not coming in any time soon.” 

Something sharp is poking into Ben’s sternum. He reaches between his body and Andy’s, retrieves the Batman mask. It’s a little bent, but he does his best to smooth it, and slips it onto April’s face and kisses her. Their mouths are both wet from the same glass of water. 

“Too bad we don’t have three masks,” Andy says, and Ben lowers his head so April’s lips are at his eyebrow. Far enough from his wounds that she begins to suck a bruise into the skin. 

“So we’ll take turns. We have all night, right? Barring unexpected alien abduction.” 

April removes her mouth. “Barring my passing out. You two already got to sleep. I’ve been watching Ron weld.” 

Andy sits up, wraps his arms around Ben’s torso and rests his head on his shoulder so they’re both staring at April. “Well, then. Batman. I guess you’re our first priority.” April smiles, and okay, Ben definitely doesn’t just want to be Batman. Something he probably should have figured out sooner. 

 

There’s no sun when they leave. Too many clouds in the sky. Ron’s fed them dried meat and given them guns like he said, some water, some cans of food. Told them, “That should hold you over until you find a safe gas station.” Andy’s already moved Champion into his cage, Ben’s Batman gauntlets protecting his arms from potentially infected fangs. April doesn’t know how much sleep she got, but it feels like not enough, so she tries to sleep on the floor of the car, with a blanket she stole when Ron wasn’t looking. Champion’s growls from above are unceasing, and Ben and Andy argue about which way to drive. 

“People are always going to Mexico when they’re running from something. They must do that for a reason.”

“And how many miles of highway are we going to drive on to get there? If we go east, we’ll find more densely populated areas, meaning more people, meaning a higher likelihood that someone will know what to do with an alien-possessed dog.” 

“Or a higher likelihood that everyone will already be infected.”

“We don’t even know that there is an infection!”

Ben’s driving anyway, so east it is, toward the nonexistent sun. April curls onto her side, pillows her cardigan beneath her head. “Wake me up when it’s my turn to drive,” she mutters, closing her eyes, but Champion growls over her. One of them turns on the radio and there’s nothing playing but static.

They’ll drive east until the aliens take them. They’ll drive east into the inescapable mouth of death.


End file.
